The Archmage’s Destruction Strategy - Chapter 36

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#036. Turning Point

If Yeojiggwi, who had entered serious mode, had released the constraint of using only the opponent’s magic techniques to defeat them, then Sung-jun had released the constraint of using only the magic he had prepared for learning purposes.

Of course, lightning-type magic that could be strongly affected by accumulated misfortune was still sealed, but Sung-jun’s appearance using countless spells created by previous Demon Lords gave the impression that the essence of magic was entirely dwelling within one person’s body.

The problem was that despite this, Yeojiggwi, who had released the constraints it had placed on itself, still looked stronger.

Having released its self-imposed constraints, Yeojiggwi attacked Sung-jun with so many techniques—martial arts, sorcery, curses, and even magic learned through Sung-jun—that it was amazing how one being could use all those skills alone.

Sung-jun countered by deploying all manner of spells created by past Demon Lords, desperately resisting Yeojiggwi’s offensive.

And the Corrosion Entity Legion surrounding them had retreated far away to avoid getting caught up in the battle between the two, watching the fight between the ‘King of Magic’ and the ‘God of Techniques.’

“Thousand Demon Hands!”

As Sung-jun shouted the spell’s incantation, eight arms made of mana were summoned behind him.

This was Sung-jun’s original spell, created to cast magic that would normally require five mages simultaneously forming hand seals with a single body.

As Sung-jun cast spells while wildly swinging the eight summoned arms, four rainbow-colored spheres rotating around him were generated, and the summoned orbs began automatically defending against Yeojiggwi’s attacks as it charged toward Sung-jun, moving at invisible speeds.

Self-repair, parallel thinking enhancement, active response magic armor, instant teleportation, mana barrier form transformation.

This spell, created by the complex interweaving of five different spells, was an automatic defense spell that Sung-jun had improvised by adding new spells absorbed from Yeojiggwi during their recent battle to his originally prepared spell.

So that the caster’s body could be protected while casting stronger spells.

However, Yeojiggwi broke through the 9th Circle-level defensive spell that should have been able to block any attack far too easily.

‘Damn future prediction!’

Yeojiggwi had no need to break through Sung-jun’s defensive magic.

It simply needed to ‘read’ the future to find the optimal path to avoid the defensive spells and attack Sung-jun.

Thanks to this, Sung-jun hastily retreated while watching his painstakingly created defensive spell being pierced so easily.

‘This doesn’t work either…’

Sung-jun couldn’t help but feel absurd at his enemy’s cheat-like ability.

All the techniques Yeojiggwi used were close to ‘ultimate moves’—evolved to their ultimate form including all possibilities for future evolution—and their sheer number overwhelmingly surpassed the spells Sung-jun knew.

Moreover, Yeojiggwi’s abilities weren’t limited to simple future prediction.

When it swung its hand, space itself would tear apart, and when it threw a punch, attacks that could distort dimensions would fly—overwhelming physical prowess befitting an apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity.

Its destructive attack power, far exceeding that of humans, was showing strength powerful enough to overwhelm Silermantis, at least in terms of offensive capability.

‘What the hell is this thing? Wasn’t Silermantis supposed to be the strongest Corrosion Entity?’

From the moment he decided to eliminate Yeojiggwi, Sung-jun had already steeled his resolve.

Of course, even if it wasn’t as strong as Silermantis, which even Teacher could only seal at the cost of his life, he knew that hunting one of only seven ‘apocalypse-class’ Corrosion Entities in the world would never be easy.

However, having begun fighting the apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity before him, Sung-jun felt as if all his accumulated efforts were being completely denied.

He had thought other apocalypse-class Corrosion Entities would be easier to deal with than Silermantis since it was said to be the natural enemy of mages, but Yeojiggwi’s strength transcended compatibility and showed power beyond common sense.

But Sung-jun wasn’t the only one surprised by his opponent’s capabilities.

‘This human is strong!’

Yeojiggwi was also astonished by Sung-jun’s abilities.

It had faced humans who called themselves mages in other universes before, but none of those mages could handle as diverse magic as Sung-jun.

Most mages specialized in specific schools of magic, but Sung-jun seemed to have no such walls of ‘specialization.’

‘Ordinary mages spend their entire lives mastering just one school of magic…’

Yeojiggwi’s surprise was natural in a way.

While the normal process of magic acquisition involved ‘training’ leading to ‘learning’ and then reaching the realm of ‘mastery,’ Sung-jun, who couldn’t use magic originally, had reached his current level by repeatedly ‘learning’ alone.

Literally, Sung-jun was like a walking magic library.

A being who appeared capable of freely casting all spells recorded within himself, like a library containing all magic that existed in a universe.

Seeing such a Sung-jun, Yeojiggwi concluded that his judgment was correct this time as well.

If Sung-jun had been left to continue growing, there was a possibility he could become a ‘singularity’ capable of overturning even the future already confirmed as Yeojiggwi’s victory.

However, unfortunately, Sung-jun had come to kill him while his growth was still incomplete, and Yeojiggwi thought this judgment was a fatal mistake that sealed Sung-jun’s own death.

‘No matter how much you struggle, your death cannot be avoided.’

Reading the future once more just in case, Yeojiggwi smiled.

Despite Sung-jun’s rapid growth through battle with a strong opponent, the future itself—where Sung-jun would ultimately fall by his hands—remained unchanged.

And finally, Yeojiggwi read the optimal path to pierce through Sung-jun’s barrage of thousands of spells and penetrate his heart.

‘Now!’

Being able to read the future doesn’t guarantee victory in every battle.

Even if you read the future of being hit and killed by an oncoming truck, avoiding that predetermined future is impossible if you don’t have the speed and time to dodge the truck.

In that sense, Yeojiggwi was a special entity with all abilities necessary for ‘future prediction’—literally specialized in reading the future.

Flexible joints evolved to copy any species’ techniques exactly, a powerful body capable of consecutively deploying ultimate secret techniques that would take an individual a lifetime of training to barely use, and a special constitution that could receive infinite supply of ‘resources’ like mana or chakra needed to cast opponents’ techniques.

Of course, this didn’t mean Yeojiggwi could copy and use every technique in the world.

For example, techniques like ‘poison arts’ that required accumulating toxins in the body over long periods were beyond even Yeojiggwi’s copying ability.

While copying the technique itself was possible, without accumulated toxins in the body, using the technique wouldn’t produce the same effect.

Similarly, it couldn’t copy techniques like assassination arts that required specific weapons matching the technique.

However, Yeojiggwi had the adaptability to substitute resources needed for techniques by using other techniques.

‘First is Ten Thousand Flower Rain.’

Yeojiggwi copied and used a technique from one of the human Awakened who had been deployed to kill it.

A unique technique that exploded internal energy like a Claymore, shooting fragments of special armor made by condensing numerous secret needles in all directions.

Yeojiggwi copied the ‘metal creation’ spell formula learned from Sung-jun’s spells to generate the armor needed for Ten Thousand Flower Rain on its body, then exploded it directly.

-KWAAAAANG!!!!!!-

With a tremendous explosion, hair-thin needles filled the entire space, and Sung-jun’s numerous defensive spells and illusions exploded in an instant.

Simultaneously, showing bizarre movements no human could make, Yeojiggwi began charging rapidly toward Sung-jun’s location.

Sung-jun frantically shot spell clusters toward all expected approach routes the moment his vision was blocked, but it was useless against Yeojiggwi.

From Yeojiggwi’s perspective of reading the future, Sung-jun’s attacks were merely minor ‘annoyances’ requiring one additional evasive maneuver.

The future was confirmed and the opponent would die.

Like the countless heroes from parallel universes it had killed before, Yeojiggwi broke through the desperately struggling opponent’s techniques head-on and drove its sword into his heart.

“This ends it.”

Confirmed death.

Inescapable future.

Reflecting that this opponent too was merely a weak mortal unable to read the future, Yeojiggwi slowly withdrew the sword that had pierced Sung-jun’s heart.

“I suppose you don’t have any resurrection spells…”

“…If I had, this fight wouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

As a faint voice flowed from the kneeling Sung-jun’s mouth, Yeojiggwi spoke in a cold voice.

“That’s right. You already knew, didn’t you? How unreasonable and miserable fighting an opponent who reads the future can be.”

“…”

“So battles without chance of victory shouldn’t be started carelessly. Weak mortal.”

Like a candle flame dying out, the countless spells Sung-jun had summoned began crumbling into glowing dust.

Creating a dreamlike, mystical atmosphere.

In the midst of light clusters that could only be described as beautiful, Sung-jun quietly hung his head.

However, on the lips of Sung-jun, who calmly accepted the death he had known was coming, was not the frustration of the defeated but the smile of the victor.

‘Smiling?’

Instantly, another future was detected in Yeojiggwi’s future prediction, which had only been able to read up to Sung-jun’s death.

A future where a special spell that Sung-jun had activated before the battle began—with ‘his own death’ as the casting condition—would trigger.

‘A spell deliberately activated in advance at a distant location where it can’t be stopped from this range… But it’s not an attack spell. It’s not particularly powerful either. It seems like a spell made simply for sending signals, but who is he trying to signal?’

After thinking briefly, Yeojiggwi immediately tried to read the more distant future.

However, at that moment, a flow of destiny so massive it could neutralize Yeojiggwi’s abilities began interfering with its future prediction.

As if invisible fog was trying to prevent it from reading the future.

Recognizing this, Yeojiggwi grabbed the collar of Sung-jun, who was hanging his head with a sword still pierced through his heart, and shook him roughly.

“What did you do!”

Yeojiggwi couldn’t get an answer.

No matter how fraudulent its ability to read the future was, extracting answers from an opponent who had already become a corpse was impossible.

Sung-jun thus quietly accepted the death he had ‘expected.’

And at that moment, 20km away from where Yeojiggwi and Sung-jun were, a small girl began blooming as the eye of the storm that would herald the beginning of the new ‘destiny’ she would lead.

“It’s heads.”

Looking at the heads side of the ‘lucky coin’ that finally appeared after thousands of throws, Awakened Shirasaki Miyu smiled.

The coin in her hand showing heads meant that the timing had finally come to read the contents of the note Sung-jun had given her, which she had been ‘dying’ to know about.

‘He said to throw the coin and read this note when it comes up heads.’

While throwing the coin with one hand, she unfolded the small note she had been preciously holding in her other hand.

There was a single sentence written in Japanese that Sung-jun had written so that Shirasaki Miyu, being Japanese, could read it even after the translation spell was broken due to his death.

「このいがわったも、がきていればグリモワールにめられるまでをめんでやる。(If I’m still alive after this fight ends, I’ll fill the Grimoire with spells up to its limit)」

The moment she read the note Sung-jun had left behind, all the luck she had accumulated began to move the world in her favor.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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